Command line arguments and matrices

Use the Matrix class to hold the weather data.
Do not include the year - only the monthly averages.
Use command line arguments: name of file, starting year

I'm a bit wet behind the ears about command line arguments, even about why would one want to store data in argc & argv, its purpose beyond that, and it's usefulness. Nevertheless, I must use it to open a file and hold the starting year for the data. Being inexperienced with command line arguments, I not sure how to even access that info and store it into the matrix class.

Can anyone explain to me the things I don't understand. Just incase my code is needed this is how far I got before these questions plagued my mind.

argc and argv are simply a way for passing information from the command line to your program.

argc contains the number of arguments. argv is an array of pointers to C-strings containing those arguments. argv[0] is always the filename of your program. argv[1] (if present) contains the first actual argument.